Respect other people’s model of the world.

This is one of the core understandings that we hold in the world of NLP, even if we don’t agree with another person’s model, or view, or the world we will always respect it.

I’d like to give you a great example here of how this comes in to everyday use and how not abiding by this core principle can mean you don’t do your job as well.

I have a client that is a dentist and I’ve been helping her with her Twitter marketing, she is truly one of those genuinely lovely people – you know the type, kind, generous and always a pleasure to chat with.

This dentist is in to Homeopathy, now to be honest that’s not my bag at all and I have pretty strong feelings about it’s claims which I’m not going to go in to here.

Now this lovely dentist has been sharing homeopathic tweets on Twitter, pointing interested people to interesting websites – and her tweets have been picked up by another Tweeter that is affiliated to a ‘science proof’ website.

He starts tweeting her saying that homeopathy is rubbish, he’s pretty aggresive too. She responds saying she respects his opinion and that he ought to respect hers.

He then replies with a very cutting tweet saying she should stick to facts and not fiction, and as a Twitterer with 14,500 followers his tweet gets retweeted over and over and suddenly this dentists is inundated with abusive messages saying how unscientific homeopathy is and how it has no place in the science of dentistry.

Now, whether homeopathy works or not is not my point – my point is that her model of the world should be respected… and here’s why.

Lets say that a very nervous patient is in severe pain and is really uncomfortable as he’s not been to the dentist for years. Let’s also assume that he is in to homeopathy.

The patient and the dentist now share a common belief, and if that common belief helps that patient to go to the dentist, reduce his anxiety and have a more relaxing time, then who are we to say homeopathy doesn’t work? That shared model of the world made a connection between those people and made a big difference to that person’s life even with the tooth removal. Dentists at Dentistry @ its Finest will always strive to save your healthy teeth but there are certain situations which will require a tooth removal Costa Mesa.

If we forced that dentist to remove the homeopathy then that patient would be denied the treatment they deserve as they would believe that they could not have it without homeopathy.

This is a powerful message that should never be forgotten, respect other people’s model of the world as it is often a very useful model!

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